You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [70]
“Don’t be silly,” Elizabeth says, “it’s just a bit of kitsch.”
“But I thought you said we’d get her something good,” Ted says.
“Oh,” Elizabeth replies, grabbing the nearest bar of lipstick, handing it to Ted. “How pretty that is, don’t you think? I think it’s pretty.”
“Ma’am, what are you doing?” the saleswoman asks.
“Nothing, nothing, it’s just that some people don’t like this—” She has the sign now and is digging her fingers at the frame, trying to get at the poster, the sound of her fingernails extremely loud, the air all around beginning to hum.
“Lady—you can’t do that.”
“Stop shouting,” she says.
“Mrs. Maynard,” Ted says. “That’s the store’s display, maybe we should leave it there.”
“I know, Ted, I’m sorry, I agree, it’s just that it’s a piece of trash and it offends people and it needs to be gotten rid of, even though we all know Thanksgiving is a nineteenth-century invention, so why she should object”—Elizabeth has it now and begins ripping—“I don’t know, I guess the whole ego thing, just too much of it—”
“I’m calling security,” the cosmetics lady announces in a voice octaves lower than a moment before.
“Come on,” Ted says, taking Elizabeth’s arm even as her hands tear the glossy paper into ever smaller pieces. He’s afraid she’ll start crying like she did the day a few weeks back when he showed her the picture he’d drawn of her. He gets them quickly out of the store and onto the escalator. She’s finished ripping, no more poster left. She stares forward now in what appears to be dread. He’s still got the lipstick in his hand but figures it doesn’t have a detector strip so pockets it as they head for the exit to the parking lot.
Crossing to the car, Mrs. Maynard still resting her hand on his arm, he thinks of his mother, who sits alone upstairs all afternoon, all morning too, coming down only for dinner, barely saying a word, her face almost dead, and how his father and brother say nothing. None of them ever talk about her when they go to the movies on the weekends, or when the relatives come and she stays in her room, or when Ted has a play at school and all week she says tomorrow, I’ll come tomorrow, and on Saturday night can’t look him in the eye to say she won’t make it. At first, Ted didn’t want to come to Plymouth Brewster as a volunteer. Enough already with the fucking mentally ill, for Christ’s sake, enough, but something made him come, and then Mrs. Maynard, when she asked him to draw, and he got to sit there and draw and have her ask him questions about the books he was reading and what he wanted to do, and how his car sounded in the winter, and what oil he used, and how much he’d weighed when he was born, just to sit there and be asked a hundred stupid questions while he drew pictures: it was all somehow worth it.
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth calls out in a high-pitched voice as they get in the car.
“Don’t worry,” he insists, clenching the steering wheel. “Don’t worry.”
Mrs. Johnson sees them from her office as they enter the lobby. “Oh dear,” she says. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Ted replies. “We went to a store, that’s all. Mrs. Maynard, she decided she wanted to leave—nothing’s the matter.”
“Elizabeth?” the director asks. “Are you all right?”
She nods. “You must be tired,” she says, turning to Ted. “You should go home and sleep.”
“Sure,” he says.
“Yes,” Mrs. Johnson agrees, taking Elizabeth’s arm, “it’s time for your nap.”
“DUUUDE,” STEVIE PIPER calls out that night, “check this out.” The bottom of a plastic gallon milk container has been cut off with a bread knife, a foil screen placed over its mouth, the Davidsons’ kitchen sink filled to the brim, the bottomless container lowered into the water, the pot lit on the screen, Stevie now slowly raising the handle, the motion drawing smoke down into the milk jug, which comes to hold an immense, dense cloud of marijuana. Stevie removes the foil, Ted puts his lips over the jug’s mouth, following it suddenly downward as Stevie plunges the handle into the water, the air pressure forcing the huge mass